The Phillips de Pury auction on Thursday night raked in what once would have come from a single painting. Despite parading out pieces by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince, the sale was good for a mere $7 million, with individual lots moving for prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thirty-nine went under the gavel, and eight didn't sell.

The Chelsea auction house lacks the savvy, knowledge and reach of Sotheby's and Christie's, so it had to lean on British art collector Charles Saatchi, who has agreed to complete most of his transactions through Phillips de Pury. In trade, subsidies from the auction house help keep access to Saatchi's gallery free.

Roughly a dozen of the lots came from Saatchi, while the others are said to have been rejected by Sotheby's and Christie's. In general, the pieces were "pretty skimpy," according to Manhattan art dealer Edward Tyler Nahem, who observes that the auction house "did pretty well with what they had."

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was the top seller, with her painting "Infinity Nets (T.W.A.)" busting past its high-end presale estimate of $400,000 and settling at $842,500 (including fees). Kusama's performance follows a well-hyped exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery this year.

The Christie's crowd on Tuesday may not have been ready to shell out big bucks for Andy Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster," but the crowd at Sotheby's was more than happy to by a boatload of currency. The top pop artist's "200 One Dollar Bills" found a buyer for a monstrous $43.8 million at the Sotheby's art auction in New York on Wednesday.

Pauline Karpidas, an art collector in London, offered the piece, Bloomberg News reports but wasn't able to verify with the collector herself. It looks like she scored with this one. "200 One Dollar Bills" carried a presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million, which didn't last long.

The piece consists of what its title states: 200 real-sized one dollar bills reproduced in black on grey ... and with a blue replica of the Treasury Department seal. If they were real cash, the sale price was greater by a factor of 219,000.

This wasn't the only success of the evening, and overall, the outcome was fantastic. Only two of the 54 lots failed to find new homes, and the final number, $134.4 million, thrashed the presale estimate of $97.7 million.

Christie's tried in New York with a 1983 piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat and didn't succeed. The auction house may have been too aggressive in estimating the 16-foot piece at $9 million. That's what's tough about the art market right now. There are signs of recovery, and it can be tempting to push for higher prices. Unfortunately, it's easy to get a bit excited. The painting had the highest estimate at the auction. The piece with the second highest presale estimate, a piece by Andy Warhol, met a similar fate.

The Basquiat piece, "Brother Sausage," was offered anonymously by a buyer later revealed by Bloomberg News to be Peter Brant, an art collector based in Connecticut. The piece may be a casualty of his divorce from model Stephanie Seymour. Well, it won't be financing post-marital discord and could remain a contested asset for a while.

Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster" was projected to move for up to $8 million and, like the Basquiat painting, didn't receive any bids. Art dealer Robert Mnuchin of L&M Arts was stuck taking it home.

Yet, some works beat the odds in an auction that raked in $74.2 million, within the presale range of $61.5 million to $88 million. Nonetheless, this was the lowest result we've seen from a Christie's New York contemporary art effort since May 2003 and down 81 percent from the top of the market two and a half years ago.

It looked like to sculptures by Damien Hirst were headed for court. The two pieces, worth an estimated $47.6 million, were part of a broader lawsuit involving Udo Fritz-Hermann Brandhorst, an art collector and heir to the Henkel AG & Co. fortune. Brandhorst's former mistress, Venetia Kapernekas, sued Brandhorst in federal court for the artwork.

Kapernekas, a 49-year-old art dealer, agreed to drop the lawsuit over the weekend in exchange for custody of the daughter she had with Brandhorst, a one-time $100,000 payment, a $500,000 trust for their daughter's education, a loft in Soho (worth around $5 million) to be held in the daughter's name and $640,000 to cover her legal expenses. She'll also get $5,000 a month in child support.

As part of the deal, Kapernekas will be able to sell an Andy Warhol painting she received from Brandhorst. It's a heart-shaped blue and red piece called "Candy Box Open" from 1983. She has chosen Sotheby's in London to handle the sale, and it could go for $40,000. She won't be able to sell another Warhol, "Heart," because it belongs to her daughter.

Sotheby's and Christie's are heading east to seek their respective fortunes. The two auction houses are offering more than $26 million of Asian art this week in London. The lots themselves are attracting record numbers of buyers from mainland China, a section of the market that has shown signs of life this year. Chinese buyers were quite active in Hong Kong last month.

Nicholas Chow of Sotheby's told Bloomberg News, ""We've seen a really aggressive push from mainland Chinese collectors during the last season of sales" and that "they're buying things at the very highest level." An Imperial jade seal, for example, moved for GBP3.6 million on Tuesday, six times the high-end presale estimate.

On November 3, Christie's sold an aggregate GBP5.7 million, beating the presale estimate of GBP5.2 million. Of the 319 lots, a third didn't move. The top seller was an eighteenth century enamel model of a Buddhist shrine, which beat its presale range of GBP60,000 to GBP80,000 with a hammer sale of GBP229,250. Nine of the top 10 most expensive items went to buyers from Asia.

Collectors from mainland China are quite eager to repatriate art and other objects from their heritage, particularly the Qing and Ming dynasties ... a fact of which the auction houses are fully aware. Christie's sent 210 invitations to mainland Chinese for its 12th annual Asian Art in London event, which ends November 7, 2009. Sotheby's pursued a similar number of collectors. Bonhams has invited 30 new buyers from mainland China.

In October, the Sotheby's Hong Kong art auction was good for $170 million, with plenty of bidding and buying by mainland Chinese buyers.

The Frieze Art Fair previews in less than a week, and London's art market players are looking to make a splash. While it's unlikely that the prestigious and well-attended event will single-handedly undo 12 months of carnage, hopes are high that it will be a turning point. Frieze is the largest art fair in Europe that's dedicated to the contemporary space.

The preview will be held on October 14, 2009, and 165 galleries will be courting the wealthy collectors expected to be in attendance – up from 151 galleries in 2008. Twenty-eight art galleries left from last year, so Frieze had to find a considerable number of new participants to make up the difference and then come out ahead.

The fair is coming on the heels of a year in which auction sales are down 70 percent to 80 percent and prices for works by many major artists are down by half.

In one of the grandest gestures the market has seen since the slump began, Gerard Faggionato, a dealer from London, will be putting Francis Bacon's "Study from the Human Body after Muybridge" up for sale at a price of $9 million. This isn't exactly what Bacon's work used to fetch, but it's still a steep price in a depressed market. Faggionato represents Bacon's estate, which is the seller.

The painting shown at right, Bacon's ' Study for the Portrait of Michel Leiris ' is being shown as part of the exhibition 'Caravaggio and Bacon' at the Borghese museum in Rome.

Last year, Vanity Fair's "New Establishment" list was hefty with art market players. This year, the magazine noted that the Wall Street folks and "big media" got their asses handed to them ... but a quick look shows that the arts got slammed, as well.

In 2008, the entire Francis Bacon supply chain showed up on the list. Bacon-inspired Damien Hirst (shown at right) filled the production link, with dealer Larry Gagosian moving Hirst's product and Roman Abramovich buying up not the Bacon-inspired but the works of the master himself. And, they wound up in some hefty positions. Hirst hit #31, with Gagosian close behind at #38. Of course, deep pockets win, which is how ol' Roman pierced the top 10 (at #8).

This year? Well, the Francis Bacon supply chain didn't fair as well. Abramovich was ignored completely, along with Gagosian. Hirst was tossed into the "Pit Stop," where he's joined by shark-loving hedge fund manager and art collector Steve Cohen, who sacrificed $750 million of his own wealth to the financial crisis.

While Cohen keeps the comings and goings of SAC Capital Advisors under wraps, we do know that Hirst had to layoff 20 employees. There's a silver lining, though. With Hirst having to do more of his own work, we probably won't have to see as much of it.

The Art Price Global Index suggests that the art market started to turn at the middle of the year, but it's going to take the autumn art season to confirm whether this is a false positive or the start of a new trend. Maybe the slight improvements in economic conditions are leading to more art market confidence (and spending), or perhaps they're just sick to death of being in a slump.

Art prices increased by 4.97 percent at the end of the second quarter, according to the Art Price Global Index. This comes after the index fell a total of 30 percent from the start of 2008. The collective will of art collectors, dealers and auctioneers probably won't be enough to change the art world, but it could happen at the same time. The Art Market Confidence Index gained 20 points during the second quarter, supporting the notion that we're all ready for this to be over.

It was still a tough quarter for Post-War and Contemporary artwork, which saw prices drop nine percent and four percent, respectively. But, the rest of the art market has fared better, thanks in large part to the increase in the number of affordable works brought under the gavel. So far this year, 79 percent of pieces sold for less than €5,000, up from 73 percent in 2008. Paintings and multiples declined, as well, by 31 percent and 41 percent, respectively, since 2008. With 4 percent and 5 percent price drops in the second quarter of 2009, their prices have returned to 2004 levels.

But, the summer's pretty quiet for the art market. We won't be able to confirm a recovery until the fall auction season begins. Then, we'll know if wallets are ready to be opened and stay that way for a while.

Art crime is running rampant around the world. More of the modern Russian art on the market is fake, according to an ArtInfo report, and authenticity is a problem in Vietnam, as well. There are lawsuits here in the United States, as well. So, ArtInfo asks the fair question: why are the wealthy, usually financially savvy so vulnerable when it comes to art?

Excitement is certainly part of the problem. The high prices, limited supply and egos involved create an emotionally charged environment. As hedge fund spouse Danielle Ganek observes in her (rather painful) novel, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, "Art is the new cocaine." Yep, and that leads to some hasty decisions.

Experience usually makes a difference in protecting collectors from fakes. New collectors rush into the bidding process, not always understanding the quality or history of what they're buying, though there's also plenty of room for seasoned buyers to make mistakes. For the newcomers, the risks include wanting to gain access to what is seen as an exclusive club, social pressures to abide by this subculture's conventions and an unwillingness to ask questions ... mostly because of those social pressures.

Yet, for all the regrets that top collectors have related about impulse buying, there are others who lament not having been faster on the paddle.

Last month, J. Ezra Merkin Ascot Partners LP sold his art collection, which included a hefty dose of works by Mark Rothko, for $310 million. The buyer still isn't known, which is the norm in the art market. But, there are some breadcrumbs along the way which Bloomberg News considered worth following. Interestingly, Merkin's Ascot Partners LP had invested a considerable amount of cash with Ponzi scam artist Bernie Madoff.

Along the way, Merkin's agent, TLIA, LLC, picked up $26.5 million of the $37.5 million in fees. The company is registered to a retired art collector and advisor, Ben Heller, age 83. He isn't talking. PaceWildenstein, which represents the Rothko estate, nabbed the other $11 million. Again, no comment. Yet, TLIA's piece of the commission is a bit high, according to art advisor Liz Klein, but she notes that answers are impossible without the full set of facts. Given the generally silent art market, we're unlikely to get all the facts anytime soon.

Like Merkin, Heller was a Madoff victim - $3.4 million in a charitable trust and $10 million of his own cash went down the drain.

Despite the large flushing sound that's accompanied the art market this year, there are still 10 collectors worth noting. In fact, ARTnews was even able to cobble together a top 200 list this year (if they went to 300, I figure I'd wind up on the list, too, given the state of the art market right now). The names in the top 10 still represent the art collecting elite, they just happen to be in much worse shape than they were at this time last year.

Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire and art addict, takes the #1 spot. It would be easy to zero in on any one of several purchases last year and call it "defining," but the man spent a few hundred million on art. The most expensive pickup was a Francis Bacon triptych which set him back almost $90 million.

Top 10 Art Collectors (according to ARTnews):

1. Roman Abramovich
2. Debra and Leon Black
3. Edythe L. and Eli Broad
4. Steven Cohen
5. Marie-Josee and Henry Kravis
6. Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder
7. Francois Pinault
8. Mitchell Rales
9. Carlos Slim Helu
10. Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed bin Ali al-Thani

Okay, so you take a quick look at this list and realize that Abramovich, who requested a bailout from the Russian government, isn't the only flawed personality it contains. Steven A. Cohen, the Connecticut-based hedge fund manager, owns a dead rotting shark. While Damien Hirst's ego is built to last, his creations are more like personal computers ... planned obsolescence. Kravis, who sits atop esteemed and powerful private equity firm KKR, was not left unscathed by the current financial crisis. The precipitous drop in oil prices over the past year must have left the sheikh in a rough spot, and Slim thought he could make money by investing in a newspaper (that's just fucking stupid ... almost as stupid as paying $90 million for a 1970s Bacon, frankly).

Maybe we'll see some changes over the next year. I wouldn't mind writing about an unknown visionary busting into the winners circle at this time next summer. Now, all we have to do is find one.

Art collectors are still taking a beating, but at least they're letting themselves hope. ArtPrice's Art Market Confidence Index (AMCI) has gained a little bit of ground this year, after enduring a dismal 2008. Prices at auction haven't followed collector optimism yet, but wishing is a prerequisite to opening your wallet.

The AMCI doesn't reflect pricing so much as art collector confidence in the market, and an upswing is evident. Last year, the AMCI plunged 30 percent, and on January 31, 2009, it revisited the low it reached after a series of disappointing November 2008 auctions. The situation remained grim in February, at which point the AMCI seemed to follow the broader financial markets, reaching a low point in early March and subsequently looking for a recovery. We haven't seen a turnaround yet, but the worst appears to be behind us.

From April to July, the AMCI is certainly pointed higher, but the sentiment is academic until collectors pry open their checkbooks and take action. Right now the money isn't flowing, and that's what has to change for the market to rebound.